


Amphibology

by starprinces



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 08:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11227377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starprinces/pseuds/starprinces
Summary: Sleep is hard, but sometimes talking about how weird your planet is compared to others is just what is needed for a good night's sleep





	Amphibology

**Author's Note:**

> A mini fic (oneshot? idk) for my 1k followers celebration on tumblr!

Sleep had never been easy for Matt, but now, now sleep was near impossible for him. Every time he’d try to lie down to sleep and actually managed to drift off, he was plagued with nightmares and ended up getting very little sleep in the end. Eventually he gave up trying to sleep every night, and only sleep when he physically couldn’t stay awake any longer. This is why, he was found in one of the many observation decks hours after (almost) everyone else had gone to bed by Coran who was finishing his nightly maintenance checks on the castle’s systems.

 

Coran knew that many of the other people on team Voltron often had trouble sleeping, so finding Matt awake at this hour wasn’t surprising. He had also seen Matt awake wandering the castle on previous nights as well. However, Coran had never really gotten a chance to speak with the older Holt sibling before, so on past nights he hadn’t confronted him as to why he was awake because he often got the feeling Matt didn’t want to talk about that.

 

Tonight, although, Matt seemed to notice Coran enter the room, and without drawing his eyes away from the stars he was watching he asked, “do you know the names of these constellations? Ever since we- Shiro, my dad, and I- were captured and taken out of out solar system I haven’t recognized any of them.” He paused for a short moment before sighing and continuing to speak, “I heard from the others that your home planet was destroyed, so in a way we’re pretty similar. We’re both so far from home. In parts of space that are unknown to us, or well, parts that aren’t as familiar as home.”

 

Matt drew his knees closer to his chest and stopped speaking, his chin resting on top of his knees. He had such a sad, far away look on his face. Despite the tough exterior he showed around the team and the rebel group they had found him with, he still was as scared as he had been when he’d been captured. Coran shook his head as he moved over to Matt and took a seat next to him. 

 

“No, I don’t know the names of these constellations, but I’m sure we have something around here that does,” he said before pulling out his tablet and entered in some words in Altean that Matt couldn’t understand.

 

After a few seconds of Coran searching through the tablet he handed it to Matt. The letters were one’s he recognized and could read, however, the words were impossible to make out. He glanced up at Coran with a confused look.

 

“Those are the names of the constellations,” Coran explained.

 

“Yeah, I got that… but… I can’t exactly read these words.”

 

“What? But they’re spelled in your alphabet, right?” Now it was Coran’s turn to look confused, he had assumed that the human would be able to read the names since they were in Matt’s language. 

 

“They are yeah,” Matt said, “but the way they’re arranged aren’t ways our words are ever spelled. I’m not even sure what sounds some of these are supposed to be making. Like, I’ve never seen a word with this many q’s.”

 

“Ques?” Coran asked. “Is that one of your Earth letters?”

 

Matt nodded. “Yeah, but no word in English or any other Earth language is spelled like that. And most words, I’d say almost all words, with q’s in them in English have a u following directly after the q. It makes a kw sound in those words. But none of these words have that. Like this one,” he pointed out one of the names on the list, “has five q’s in a row. What sound does that make?”

 

“Wait. Earth has more than one language?”

 

“Uh… Yeah? Does- er- did Altea not?”

 

“No, every planet I’ve ever been to only seems to have one language. They have different dialects, yeah, but I’ve never heard of a planet with more than one language,” Coran said. “How many languages does Earth have?”

 

“Hundreds,” Matt replied. “But I only know how to speak two fluently, I know bits and pieces of others.”

 

“The language you and the paladins speaks is called ‘ing lish’, correct?”

 

“Yep. But I know Shiro also speaks Japanese and Lance knows Spanish, I think? Ka- Pidge and I also speak Hebrew. I’m not sure if Hunk or Keith know any other language because I’ve never heard them speak anything other than English.”

 

“Fascinating,” Coran said in awe. “Can you teach me more about Earth?”

 

“Um, sure. But only if you teach me about Altea and the rest of space you know about. Also, you should teach me how to read these names,” Matt said with a quiet laugh.

 

“It’s a deal then. But for now, you should try to get some sleep, you look exhausted.”

 

Matt stiffened in response to Coran’s suggestion. “N-no, I’m fine.”

 

“Matt?” Coran looked concerned.

 

“I’m fine, really.”

 

“Is something wrong? Normally when one of the paladins doesn’t want to sleep it means something is wrong.”

 

“It’s nothing, just… bad dream is all. I’m fine,” he repeated, this time putting on a fake smile to try to sell his lie further.

 

“Well, do you mind if I stay here with you to keep you company?”

 

Matt threw Coran a surprised look. “But don’t you need to sleep?”

 

He shook his head. “Alteans don’t need to sleep as often as humans.”

 

“What about Allura? She sleeps every night.”

 

“She uses far more of her energy during the day than I do when she’s controlling the ship, so she needs to sleep more often to recover that energy,” Coran explained. “Also, if I stay up with you, I can start teaching you some things about Altea?”

 

“Oh. Then sure, that would be great.” Matt smiled again, but this time fore real. “Thank you Coran.”

 

“It’s no problem, Matt,” Coran said before beginning to talk about Altea. A few hours later Matt ended up being lulled to sleep by Coran’s stories, his head falling on Coran’s shoulder. The Altean smiled before picking Matt up and carrying him to his room and tucking him into bed. As he turned off the light he whispered, “Good night, Matt.” and then left the room.

 

Matt ended up sleeping through the whole night, dreaming about the beautiful images of Altea Coran had described in his stories.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm mattholtsbf on tumblr if you wanna come talk about Matt or any other vld character with me!!


End file.
